I hate to distract anyone from any of the heavy discussions we’re having, today – but, I find this article really interesting. Because, frankly, the whole thing was stumbled practically as a joke.
Wrigley Gum sent 700 packages of the company’s new “lifestyle” gum — called “5″ — to a Cornell class on the fundamentals of marketing, Sept. 19. The next day, the 591 students took their first prelim and indicated whether they had chewed any of the gum (and whether they were chewing it during the exam).
“The really amazing thing is that when we reported the scores of how the students did on their prelim, students that were chewing gum during the exam had a mean score of 90, compared with the class mean of 78,” said Cornell Professor Ed McLaughlin, who teaches the introductory marketing class.
Noting that this was not a scientific study, just an informal one, McLaughlin was nevertheless struck that students who had chewed none of the gum received a mean score of 60; students who had chewed several pieces had a mean score of 81; and those who chewed the whole pack, 86.
“There was no control group, we did this just for fun, but there were over 150 people in each of these categories!” McLaughlin noted.
The article briefly notes that recent research indicates that act of chewing gum increases blood flow to the brain – and doesn’t say much more than that. But, Wrigley may just have hit upon something really useful.
Update: I found a link to a .pdf of the study mentioned in the article.
